Question for Anyone and Everyone

Hello all fellow diarists,

I have a question I would like to ask of you all. I’ll give some background first. I am friends with a man on AOL, we have chatted for over 9 months and have met too. We were (I believe very good friends). Were we on the verge of becoming “more than” friends….I think so. BUT…..and you all knew that was coming didn’t you? More background. I don’t normally chat on line in chat rooms because I think it can be dangerous to a marriage..now that being said, my husband on the other hand chats with and becomes emotionally involved with “many” women on the internet. Which is probably why I am so dead set against it…it hurts big time. He has had a “one night mistake”…his words…mine was “affair”, but that is neither here nor there. This male friend and I “met” when he emailed me about my web pages, we became friends because he was charming, smart, used words like I do, likes to read (same taste as me), likes music, loves the beach and we have soccer in common as our kids play the sport. we got along so well. Silly as it may sound, right from the start I felt a connection to him that I have never felt with anyone else. I felt as though I had known and loved him since the dawn of time…..yes, I said love…but I didn’t tell him that because we are both married and neither one of us was willing to leave our children. I was very willing to have our specil friendship with him and leave it at that…at least for the time being. DId he know I had strong feelings for him…..probable…he is a very smart man.

Now, here is my problem…..we no longer speak. He asked me not to email him or IM him until the “time is right again”, which to me was a goodbye. He said it was only goodbye for “now”.

Reason being……my best friend from HS came home for our HS reunion. Now, she knows everything I have gone through with hubby and is very protective of me (we have been friends for 35 yrs..since we were 13, so she knows me well). If you know one of us, you know the other, we are that much alike. Well, we got to talking at the reunion (we stayed overnight at the hotel the reunion was in) and she let me know how she feels about what is going on in my marraige. Kiddingly, she said I should do the same. Of course, one look at my face and she knew that my “friendship” with this person was more than I had told her on the phone. She got a little crazy and became afraid for me. How did I know he was telling the truth? What if he was lying just like my hubby does? How do I know he is who he says he is? etc., etc. One thing ld to another and she said she was going to “talk” to him online and try to see if he was who he says he is. I told her no, but I knew she would probable do it. Now mind you, a while ago, I had given her his screen name and told her that if anything ever happened to me to let him know so he wouldn’t worry, so he knew his s/n. I thought I had time to talk her out of her plan as she was staying in NY for a while. Well, she did it, here, on my computer, while I was at work. Then again she had a long IM at my job when I took her there because I was going to be driving her to the Airporter shuttle for her trip back home later in the day. I let her use my work computer since I was in another room learning a new system at work. Now mind you, we are very similiar and in trying to not sound like her, she sounded like me….adn he caught on……and thought it WAS me trying to trick him. He will not believe it wasn’t me and is so upset with me that he won’t talk to me now. I’ve apoligized many times over and took full balme, but he is so hurt and upsert with me.

Question, was what she did so terrible? I tried to explain the reason…she was worried about me, etc, but he won’t hear of it. He says she would have told him who she was IF it was indeed her talking to him, she says no way, then he could just lie to her….She wanted to see who is was w/o him knowing we are friends. He says “I’ve ruined a perfectly good frienship”…did I? How? I feel like he is taking this really badly…..but he still insists that it was me because of the way the ims sounded and the spelling and the words used…I tried to explain again, how close we are adn that we’ve known each other since 13 and we ARE very, very similiar…but no go. I am so sad that he won’t talk to me, it is breaking my heart, yet it wasn’t me he was talking to and I feel so badly for hurting him.

Any feedback?